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Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

nytimes.com

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Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#171

Post by Symbiote »

FireBeyond wrote: post #138
itishappy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> did you have an accurate gauge of exactly how far you could travel? My ICE almost stranded me during the recent freeze. Conditions affect fuel economy for all vehicles. > Did you have reliable, strong heat in the cabin? This feels like an imagined problem. EVs heat their cabin more efficiently than ICEs. If you end up off the road during a storm (been there) an EV will last longer for the same fill level. They also…

> EVs heat their cabin more efficiently than ICEs. Citation needed. Are EVs using different cabin heating to ICEs? My Audi will recirculate waste engine and coolant heat to the cabin for up to 20 minutes (like if you're in a grocery store) with nothing but a fan. > They also tend to heat up faster due to not having to adjust the entire thermal mass of the engine block. An ICE doesn't heat the engine block? Modern ICE…

Many EVs, especially newer ones, use a heat pump. These are 200, 300% or more efficient.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#172

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

Symbiote wrote: post #163
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the two end stations exist because people were already there, they didn't build that railway across the US before these areas were settled. What you're arguing is that there are towns that would pop up around these railways after the fact, and while that's true, they would also pop up around water, gold, and other natural resources. It turns out there's lots of reasons why communities form, but one thing we know for…

The USA has several many towns and cities which were built because of railways. Railways induce demand, both for work for the railway (moving trains, moving goods between trains, services for passengers), and for the excellent transport connections they provide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_towns_in_the_U...

please re-read my post, you misunderstood it.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#173

Post by itishappy »

FireBeyond wrote: post #166
itishappy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Citation needed. Are EVs using different cabin heating to ICEs? I'm not sure how to cite the fact that EVs do not have engines. Electric motors do generate waste heat, but via a significantly more efficient process, so an additional source of heat is needed. > An ICE doesn't heat the engine block? Yes they do. Where's your Audi recirculating waste heat from? Auxiliary heating systems like you describe are the exact…

> Auxiliary heating systems like you describe are the exact same design that EVs use as primaries, just driven electrically. I'm confused, what non-electrical method of generating cabin heat are EVs using, then? But for the sake of argument - auxiliary heating in an ICE is similar to a floor heater, electrical resistance heating. Beyond that, the argument is that on an ICE, the heat in the engine block is a byproduct…

> I'm confused, what non-electrical method of generating cabin heat are EVs using, then?

Heat pumps are the fancy way to do it that can be installed in both ICEs and EVs.

> the heat in the engine block is a byproduct of the combustion required to move the vehicle. That heat isn't "free", but is paid for by the primary purpose of moving the vehicle.

Agreed! It's free in the sense that it's already being generated, but it's still waste because it's generated regardless of need as a result of a suboptimal conversion process. We use it as heat because it's unusable for anything else, but it'd be nicer if it wasn't generated in the first place.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#174

Post by falcolas »

Waterluvian wrote: post #154
falcolas wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windchill doesn't affect vehicles, since it's based on additional cooling caused by wind-driven evaporation. The base temperature would matter more.

Keg River was -50 without the wind chill. But none of this is the point. “Cold” isn’t a fixed concept. It really matters just how cold a kind of vehicle can get before there’s an issue. And at a certain level of coldness you’ve still got to plug in your ICE.

I'm not disputing that, just commenting on the specific reference to wind chill.

I have plenty of experience with plugging in block heaters. One nice thing is they don't have to be plugged in all night long, just for an hour or so in the morning. In fact, modern vehicles specifically call out not keeping them plugged in all night long.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#175

Post by Waterluvian »

falcolas wrote: post #174
Waterluvian wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keg River was -50 without the wind chill. But none of this is the point. “Cold” isn’t a fixed concept. It really matters just how cold a kind of vehicle can get before there’s an issue. And at a certain level of coldness you’ve still got to plug in your ICE.

I'm not disputing that, just commenting on the specific reference to wind chill. I have plenty of experience with plugging in block heaters. One nice thing is they don't have to be plugged in all night long, just for an hour or so in the morning. In fact, modern vehicles specifically call out not keeping them plugged in all night long.

Oh that’s on me! Didn’t realize I referenced it, and I think that’s in error.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#176

Post by alright2565 »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #156
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! People say, "rural communities need cars". And sure, new sprawl does need cars, like whatever shat itself over the Front Range. But a lot of old towns had trains . Or stage coaches. Or, later, busses. You see this all over the Old West, and New England, and the Rust Belt. These little towns grew up before there were cars . You still see this in rural Europe. There will be some little village in the middle of…

> These little towns grew up before there were cars. they used horses... I think it's hilarious how people are trying to argue that a single train stop in a town is somehow public transportation for the citizens of that town to get around said town. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Your comment reminds me of this cartoon: https://i.imgur.com/aVpP0t6.png

It's interesting how quickly we forget about how things used to be. My grandparents were subsistence farmers in my lifetime, and they did not use horses to get around town. I don't think they ever owned a horse.

For regular everyday travel, they walked.

They'd sometimes need to go work out in a field. On those days, they'd hitch up the cows to the wagon and spend the day working there. This is a slow process, so they'd need to have enough work to spend the whole day there.

Horses were never a transportation method, except for the extremely rich. They were agricultural tools. Looking at France, because data is easy to get there, the population of France was about 40 million in 1900[2]. Around that time, France also had about 3 million horses, or about a horse for every 13 people. Of these 3 million horses, 2.5 million were "draft horses" used for pulling plows.

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-the-horse-p... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#Histori...

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#177

Post by natch »

kjellsbells wrote: post #105
tw04 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly accurate. Pick a car - say a Mustang Mach-e: a standard 15A outlet is going to charge at 4miles/hr. Say you get home a 6pm, never go anywhere, and leave it plugged in overnight - that's 48 miles of range. If you're talking dead of winter in Chicago in negative temps, assume half that. Long story short: a 15A outlet really isn't going to get the job done for charging a car. Also you cannot just char…

There's also a little psychology at play. On an ICE car, a full tank shows up as 300+ miles of range, and 48 miles of range would be a strong prompt to most driver to get to a gas station, even if they only needed to drive another 15 miles. People dont like thinking they could be caught short. People also like to think that their car can get them out of any personal jam, eg, if they need to take a family membership t…

You can still keep your car charged at 80 or 90 percent even if you only drive 35 miles a day in your daily commute. The charge you add each night can be toward the top of the range, instead of always staying at the bottom of the range.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#178

Post by natch »

tw04 wrote: post #76
natch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or an electrical outlet within reach. “Charging station” makes it sound inordinately expensive. An outlet is all they need and is already hard enough that there’s no need to make it sound harder than it is.

That's not exactly accurate. Pick a car - say a Mustang Mach-e: a standard 15A outlet is going to charge at 4miles/hr. Say you get home a 6pm, never go anywhere, and leave it plugged in overnight - that's 48 miles of range. If you're talking dead of winter in Chicago in negative temps, assume half that. Long story short: a 15A outlet really isn't going to get the job done for charging a car. Also you cannot just char…

For the scenarios you describe a 220 outlet will work fine. Still no charger needed. I won’t go into cable locking solutions for the same reason we don’t need to go into gas station muggings. They distract from the key point, which is that a “charging station” is not needed.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#179

Post by PaulHoule »

thfuran wrote: post #146
pkulak wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! And yet, cities aren't like private businesses; they don't do what's in demand. Instead of spending millions on public transportation, they spend billions on more roads to suburbs because that's what they are used to, and why the hell not? What good will come to elected officials from millions of car-fr…

>But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! It really doesn't. NYC isn't $ARBITRARY_SUBURB except without obligatory car ownership.

A better comparable is to consider rents in an outlying section of Queens that is far from transit and compare that to Manhattan.

For that matter a person could very much live car free in a minor city like Binghamton or Ithaca NY if they work at a place that is well served by transit.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#180

Post by pkulak »

thfuran wrote: post #146
pkulak wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! And yet, cities aren't like private businesses; they don't do what's in demand. Instead of spending millions on public transportation, they spend billions on more roads to suburbs because that's what they are used to, and why the hell not? What good will come to elected officials from millions of car-fr…

>But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! It really doesn't. NYC isn't $ARBITRARY_SUBURB except without obligatory car ownership.

I totally disagree. Density and transit are the defining traits of NYC. What's something else NYC offers that you can't find in a similarly sized, but spread out, population? Keeping in mind that the population of NYC is about that of the entire Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, or the entire state of Washington.
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